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Don't give baby goats water bottles - a few sips in a bottle is fine but not full bottles on a regular basis- WHY?

Have you seen your baby goat urinate red urine and are you giving it bottles of water?

What happens with the water in the bottle is called:Hemoglobinuria (Water intoxication)

The presence of free hemoglobin in the urine, an abnormal finding, that may make the urine look dark. Hemoglobin is the protein in the red blood cells which carries oxygen from the lungs to the tissues of the body and returns carbon dioxide from the tissues to the lungs. The iron contained in hemoglobin gives red blood cells their characteristic color.

Red blood cells are normally taken out of circulation after approximately 4 months; they are trapped and disassembled in the spleen, bone marrow, and liver. If, however, red cells hemolyze (break down) within the vascular system, the components are set free in the blood stream. Free hemoglobin is bound by haptoglobin (another protein) and reprocessed. But if the level of hemoglobin in the blood rises above the ability of haptoglobin to reclaim it, hemoglobin begins to appear in the urine -- there is hemoglobinuria.

Hemolytic anemia

Hemolysis is the breakage of the red blood cellâs (RBCâs) membrane, causing the release of the hemoglobin and other internal components into the surrounding fluid.

Here are a couple of cases studies:

Hemolysis associated with water administration using a nipple bottle for human infants in juvenile pygmy goats.

A 4-month-old, 6.8-kg, castrated male pygmy goat was examined for recurrent episodic fever and red urine of 7 days' duration. A second, 3-month-old, 7-kg, intact female pygmy goat was presented for similar clinical signs. The red discoloration of the urine in each case was determined to be due to hemolysis with subsequent hemoglobinuria. In both cases, hemolysis and hemoglobinuria were closely associated with the goats consuming large volumes of water from a nipple bottle. A diagnosis of water intoxication-induced hemolysis and hemoglobinuria was made. Episodes of hemoglobinuria in the first case were consistently associated with dilute (specific gravity < 1.010) urine. Water intoxication has been associated with bottle-feeding in human infants and is also widely reported in human psychiatric patients. The small erythrocytes in goats appear to be the most sensitive of the domestic species to hypotonicity-induced hemolysis.